


Strangers on a Train

by StarMaamMke



Series: Different Paths (A multi-fandom collection of AU prompts) [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - 1950s, F/M, Train Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 21:24:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9460940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarMaamMke/pseuds/StarMaamMke
Summary: Jim Hopper and Joyce Byers get double-booked on a train taking them towards their respective Reno Divorces (Edited by me, mistakes are my own)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ObeyDontStray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObeyDontStray/gifts).



> Series based on a prompt list created by @thebestworstidea on Tumblr. I mostly post Jopper, but this was an exercise to see what other ships I could write for. Follow me on Tumblr (@StarMaamMke or @StrangerThingsFics) or leave your prompt requests in the comments.
> 
> The List:
> 
> soulmates au  
> childhood best friends au  
> teacher/student au  
> teacher/single parent au  
> one night stand and falling pregnant au  
> meeting at a coffee shop au  
> fake relationship au  
> roommates au  
> meeting online au  
> high school popular kid/nerd au  
> partners in crime au  
> writer and editor au  
> co-stars au  
> lab partners au  
> meeting in the E.R/A&E au  
> brand new neighbours au  
> meeting at a party whilst drunk au  
> waking up with amnesia au  
> parents meeting when they take their kids to class au  
> dysfunctional relationship au  
> best friends sibling au  
> two miserable people meeting at a wedding au  
> meeting on a train ride au  
> literally bumping into each other au  
> librarian/avid reader au  
> sitting on the same park bench au  
> meeting at a support group au  
> knocking on the wrong door au  
> going away to war au  
> tourist/knowledgeable local au  
> prostitute/client au  
> doctor/companion au  
> celebrity/fan au  
> meeting at a masquerade ball au  
> one of them trying to get the other one off of drugs au  
> living in a society where their love is taboo au  
> meeting in prison au  
> cop/person getting a speeding ticket au  
> long distance relationship au  
> exes meeting again after not speaking for years au  
> ghost/living person au  
> star-crossed lovers au  
> falling in love with their best friend’s partner au  
> one of them being diagnosed with a terminal illness au  
> pretending to hate each other au  
> nanny/single parent au  
> meeting at a festival au  
> meeting again at a high school reunion au  
> boss/intern au  
> going through a divorce au
> 
> The Ships:  
> Hopper/Joyce (Stranger Things)  
> Jonathan/Steve (Stranger Things  
> Mulder/Scully (X-files)  
> Rebecca/Greg (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)  
> Rebecca/Nathaniel (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)  
> Han/Leia (Star Wars)  
> Henry/Eliza (Selfie)
> 
> I can't promise the prompts will be answered in an expedient manner since I am working on a story for a Stranger Things Big Bang on Tumblr, but I will definitely consider them.
> 
> Coming up in the series:
> 
> Pretending to hate each other/Nanny AU - Jopper  
> Teacher/Single Parent AU - Jopper  
> One of them trying to get the other one off of drugs AU - Jopper  
> Ghost/Living Person AU- Mulder/Scully  
> High School Popular Kid/Nerd AU - Han/Leia  
> 

**A Luxury Train en Route to Reno**

**1955**

* * *

 

Jim Hopper wasn’t usually put out by the sight of a pretty woman in his room, but when he opened the door to his private sleeper suite on one of the most expensive train rides he had ever paid for in his life, and saw a petite brunette reading near the window, he could honestly say that he was a little bit miffed. 

“I think there’s been some sort of mistake,” he grumbled, removing his hat and loosening his scarf. 

The woman raised one perfect, dark eyebrow and smirked before taking a leisurely drag from her cigarette. He noticed her lips were fire engine red, which contrasted beautifully with her fair skin and rich, russet tresses. It also matched her wool travel suit, which showed off a trim figure. She would have made a perfect picture of cool elegance if it had not been for the price tag dangling from the end of her sleeve. He coughed and nodded towards it. Her face fell as she removed the offending blight on her otherwise perfect facade. 

“Tail-end of a spree?” he asked. 

“I guess you could say that. I’m going to Reno to divorce my useless husband, and I decided to take back the money he stole from our bank account. That’ll teach him to not trust banks.”

“Where was he keeping it?” Jim wanted to get back to the subject of why she was in his car, but the spirited way in which she relayed information compelled him to find out more. Her voice was throaty - deeper than he expected from a woman of her stature. Her sentences came out fast and slightly breathless, like she was impatient with her own stories and wanted to get them over with, fast. For a well-dressed lady, she looked as though she rolled her eyes and scoffed a fair bit. 

“His girlfriend’s lingerie drawer.”

Jim’s loud and sudden bark of laughter caused the woman to give a violent start that nearly shook the cigarette from her gloved fingers and onto the floor. Back to business, though.

“Why are you in my car?”

The woman cleared her throat and gave him a quizzical look. 

“I’m sure I have no idea what you are talking about. This is my room. I paid a mint for it.”

“You husband’s girlfriend did.”

“No,  _ I  _ did. That was  _ my  _ money. I didn’t bust my ass in secretarial school to work for that creep Donald, just so some teenager can can buy lollipops and training bras with my hard-earned money!” Jim cringed. He hadn’t meant to strike a nerve, and from her loud, borderline panicked tone, he could tell she was agitated. Jim set down his suitcase, reached into his coat pocket, and produced a ticket. 

The woman stood and snatched the paper from his hand, giving it a scrutinizing once over. Her cheeks became flushed with crimson, a sight that gave Jim a funny sort of flutter in his chest and throat. He realized, not for the first time, that she was very attractive. 

“Well, it looks like we have a problem.” She reached over to the table by the window she had been reading near, and grabbed a red clutch. She popped it open, fished inside and handed him her ticket.

Double booked. Goddamn. 

“We need to see the conductor right away, Mrs...”

“Byers. Joyce Byers.” She extended a hand towards him, and he took it. It was small, and fine-boned. She made him feel oafish and wrong-footed.

“Jim Hopper.”

“Travel to Reno often?” Joyce’s red lips quirked at the sides, and her amber eyes sparkled with life. Her easy vitality was not enough to quell the stab of grief in his chest at her words.

“I’m going for the same reason you are.” He cleared his throat to clear the thick emotion in his tone.

Joyce quirked her head to one side. “It’s not the happy occasion that mine is, I take it?”

He began to shake his head, but the conductor picked that moment to poke his head through the door.

“Tickets please.”

The situation was explained. Unfortunately, there were no vacant cars considering it was the Hawk Luxury Liner’s maiden voyage. One of them would have to be dropped off at the next stop and reimbursed for the price of the room. 

“We could both stay,” Joyce reasoned. The conductor, a heavily moustached man in his 60s, looked flabbergasted.

“Ma’am, there is only one bed!”

To Jim’s shock, Joyce shrugged. “What of it? There’s plenty of room. I’m sure we can make it work. Besides,” Joyce dipped her chin and lowered her voice “we both  _ really _ need to make it to Reno.” She raised her eyebrows as realization dawned on the conductor. The man nodded.

“It’s none of my business of course.”

Joyce nodded. “No, it’s not.”

The conductor left the two alone to ponder their situation.

“Joyce -Mrs. Byers- I could get off at the next stop. It’s really no trouble.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. Let’s have a drink.”

So they dressed for dinner, walked to the dining car together, drank and talked. Jim found himself hating Joyce’s soon-to-be ex-husband every time with every story she shared. Apparently the marriage had produced no offspring, though Joyce had hoped for two children (boys) when she first got married. 

“What a relief to find out he was shooting blanks the whole time. Saved me a lot of grief, although not really, considering I was married to him for so long.”

Jim found it easy to conceal the the details of his marriage and divorce from Joyce because she had apparently been waiting for years for the opportunity to have someone listen to her. And he did. On a great number of subjects, and quite willingly, too. By the time their waiter announced that the dining car was closing for the evening, Jim realized that he could have sat and listened to her talk for hours more. He liked the way her hands fluttered about as she leapt from tangent to tangent, and he especially liked the way she laughed at her own little jokes. He laughed too. More than he had in the past year, actually .

When confronted with the sleeping situation, Jim immediately volunteered to sleep in the living area, on the recliner. Again, Joyce rolled her eyes. 

“I think we can both tamp down on our animal instincts for the sake of comfort.” 

Jim blushed a deep crimson at the implication. The way she chewed at her lower lip with perfect, white teeth and grinned made his pants feel a full size smaller. His whole body felt warm. 

“Unless…” she trailed off and shook her head with a chuckle. 

“Unless what?”

She grasped at the front of his dress shirt with both hands, stood on her tiptoes, and attempted to kiss him. At that exact moment, the train hit a rocky bit of road and the car swayed to one side, sending Jim back against the nearest wall, and pushing Joyce flush against his body. His arms wrapped around her instinctively to keep her from falling. She looked up at him with those large, expressive eyes and he found himself unable to resist finishing what she had started.

Her lips were soft and sweet and he loved the way she hummed and sighed between kisses. However, after a few minutes of excruciatingly slow exploration of her mouth, he found his neck was becoming stiff from accommodating her diminutive stature. If they were going to continue it would have to be…

“Bed,” Joyce (who had been a perfect stranger up until two hours prior) murmured against his mouth, she was frantically kicking off her high heels. 

He pushed her onto the full-sized bed (large by train standards, but small by Jim Hopper standards, it really would have been a tight squeeze if they had continued to keep it chaste), and knelt to the floor so that he could push her dress and slip above her hips. Her panties were midnight blue, and made from the same silky material as the pencil-cut evening gown she had chosen for the dining car. His hands trembled as her ran them up and down her thighs before removing the restraints that held her stockings to her garter belt.

“Come up here and kiss me,” Joyce sighed impatiently.

“Shhh. These are really, really nice, I need to do this carefully.” He slowly dragged the silk stockings from her ivory legs, pressing kisses along the revealed flesh. She sat up, giggled and jerked her right leg away when his mouth ventured to the back of her knee.

“Don’t. I’m liable to break your nose on accident.” she hissed with a grin when he steadied her by placing a hand on the same knee. He chuckled and leaned forward to give her a slow, passionate kiss that quickly turned frenzied and animalistic when she bit his lower lip, his teasing hands travelling from her thighs to the back of her dress, with the intent to rip it off of her.

“This is nice too, you know. I don’t get to buy pretty dresses every day,” she scolded, placing her hands on his wrists. She rose to her feet and turned around, revealing a row of ivory buttons running from the base of her neck to the waist of the gown. 

Eventually, clothes were removed with reverent respect to quality, and Jim found himself between Joyce’s legs, licking and sucking into the honeyed sweetness of her center as she gasped, whimpered, and twitched. Her fingers were threaded through his hair, gripping and relaxing reflexively without regard to his comfort. He drew a long, low cry from her before stopping to sheath himself.  Safety assured, he gave her a long kiss, allowing her to taste herself on his lips before covering her with his body and entering her with torturous leisure.  

They moved together, slowly at first, and then gained speed when the train hit another rough patch and lent its own rhythm to the proceedings. Jim had a fleeting moment of terror when he realised that he had not been with a woman in months, that he was either going to disappoint her or finish quickly. As though reading his mind, she released her legs vice-like grip on his waist and murmured something that sounded like “lie back”. He obeyed and she was straddling him in an instant, lowering herself onto his glistening cock. 

Joyce was in her element when she controlled the pace, he noticed. Her back arched, and her eyes were half-closed as though in a hazy dream state as her hips snapped and rotated on top of him. She reached down to pull both of his hands up to cover her enticing, bouncing breasts. As his thumbs and forefingers circled and pinched at her pale, pink nipples he realised he was so close...so very close. When her rhythm became erratic and her breath came out in a series of pants and whimpers, he decided it was acceptable to allow his own release to happen. 

He came with a shuddering gasp, hands falling to her hips to grasp them as she ruthlessly ground out his last bit of energy. She collapsed against his chest with a chuckle, and he found himself unable to resist stroking her dark hair as she pressed kisses against his collarbone and neck.

“Well goddamn, Joyce,” he swore, struggling to catch his own breath.

“How many days until Reno?” Joyce inquired.

“Two more sleeps.”

Joyce rested her chin on his chest so he could look into her eyes. They were sparkling with that impish mischief that had pulled him in hours earlier. “Sleep?”

His heart felt thirty pounds lighter. He did not know what was going to happen once they got off the train, or if he would be able to find himself being in a position to relate his own sad story to this practical stranger, but for the next few days he was hellbent on making the most of the arrangement. 

 


End file.
